Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe with her daughter before returning to prison.
Photograph: Family

Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe, the British-Iranian woman jailed for spying in Iran, is back in prison after the judiciary rejected a request to extend her three-day temporary release.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was released on Thursday after more than two years in jail, in a move that took her and her family by surprise. She returned to Tehran’s Evin prison on Sunday evening local time to continue serving her five-year term.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe reacted with incredulity, insisting she was innocent, according to her husband, who remains in the UK. She was described as shivering, shaking and crying when the deputy prosecutor told her earlier in the day that she had to be separated from her daughter again.

“This feels a dark world. I used to pray, but these past two years I’ve lost much of my faith. Who would take a child from their mother?” she said on the phone to her husband, Richard Ratcliffe, before going back to prison.

“I was so happy yesterday walking in the street seeing normal life again, but I also envied the people in the street walking, holding their children’s hands. I just want a normal life.”

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was told earlier in the day that authorities had approved a request put in by her lawyer for an extension to the furlough, but the prosecutor’s office notified her later that a permit had not been signed off and she had to return to prison.

She visited the prosecutor’s office just after midday on Sunday – she was told she did not have to return to prison at least for that day. While on her way home, her interrogators told her the extension had been approved due to her good behaviour while being on prison leave. But 10 minutes after arriving home, she received another call from the prosecutor’s office, informing her that she had to return to Evin prison before sunset.

“How can you take me away from my baby when she needs me,” she was quoted as saying to the deputy prosecutor, according to her husband.

“I haven’t done anything wrong – you just extended my cellmate’s furlough, and she is serving a longer sentence for bigger crimes,” she told the deputy prosecutor, according to Ratcliffe. “You know I didn’t do anything in the first place. I have spent two and a half years in prison, and I haven’t committed any crime.”

Ratcliffe said his wife had decided to return to the prison voluntarily to avoid being dragged out of bed in the middle of the night and the upset that would cause to four-year-old Gabriella.

He said: “I still find it an extraordinary decision. I did not believe after all the effort it took to get out it would only be for three days.”

Kate Allen, Amnesty International UK’s director, said the news was a crushing disappointment. “There were real hopes that not only would her three-day furlough be extended, but that her permanent and unconditional release was also just around the corner,” she said.

“We shouldn’t lose sight of what Nazanin has had to endure – nearly two and a half years behind bars, eight gruelling months of solitary confinement without a lawyer, a deeply unfair trial, and also being subjected to a string of unfounded accusations from the Iranian authorities. Nazanin is a prisoner of conscience who should never have been jailed in the first place.”

Hadi Ghaemi of the Centre for Human Rights in Iran, said: “Three days of temporary release after almost three years behind bars under bogus charges is far too little and too late.”

The UK Foreign Office said: “We remain very concerned about all our dual nationals detained in Iran, and continue to make decisions in line with what we believe will produce the best outcomes in their cases,” but did not specifically comment about Zaghari-Ratcliffe’s return to prison.

Zaghari-Ratcliffe was arrested in April 2016 as she and her daughter were about to board a flight back to the UK after a visit to her family in Iran. She was accused of attempting to orchestrate a “soft overthrow” of the Islamic Republic, spying and running “a BBC Persian online journalism course which was aimed at recruiting and training people to spread propaganda against Iran”. She denies the allegations.

On Saturday night, the last night she spent with Gabriella before finding out she had to return to prison, Zaghari-Ratcliffe sent a text to her husband, who is in Edinburgh attending a play about her ordeal, called Nazanin’s Story.

The 3am message read: “I really need to sleep, but I am worried to death as I don’t know what happens tomorrow – whether I will still have the chance to sleep next to my baby and hear her breath as I can now, or whether I will be in that prison away from her again. The thought of going back really kills me – even before tomorrow comes. Know that I love you.”